Except the hundreds of thousands of people who swung Florida, WI, and MI do not make $200K a year. The election was very much won by this majority.

There are people who spraypaint unintelligible garbage on highway overpasses and key peoples' cars as a big middle finger to society, too.

It's all just trolling. It's not to gain anything. It's to make things worse for everyone else.

It's that kind of disrespect for the opinions of others which had so many believing that Trump could not win.

I would say it's more along the lines of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and (naturally) assuming that most decent people wouldn't vote for someone who espouses the racist, mysoginistic and generally hateful views of Trump.

Of course, history shows that people are quite capable of voting in people like that.

There doesn't really seem to be much substance to Trump's actual policies. He insists Mexico is going to pay for the wall, but there is fuck all chance of that. Congress isn't going to pay for it either. Even if he did build a wall, it would have zero effect (the smugglers are already quite capable of building very long and deep tunnels), so it would be a huge waste of money.

It seems to be mostly hot air, showmanship, and negative campaigning. If you listen to the reasons why people are voting, you generally hear things like "Clinton is a crook", "email scandal", "make America great". He really just did an excellent job of running his campaign.

Some might call that cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There is no limit to the stupid shit people like to say when their political opinions aren't accepted as gospel by others.

I suppose in this case I might be wrong. At $200k annual income they are probably well positioned to benefit from his policies, as opposed to his lower income supporters.

> She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians.

Other than Trump himself not being a career politician, it seems most likely to merely alter which career politicians are rewarded, not the extent to which such politicians are rewarded, which isn't a big blow tout "career politicians" in any general sense.

With that kind of income, I would venture to say that they're just republicans.

You say that as if you think that is prima facie a bad thing. It's that sort of categorization which has poisoned political discourse in this country.

I hope Trump's shock to both the major parties encourages them to reconsider the war for power they wage day and night. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

I'm not saying being a republican is a bad thing, I'm saying this statement "She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians." makes even less sense coming from a republican or someone that's likely to benefit from republican policies.

The only way that statement makes sense is if the person saying it would be negatively affected and/or Trump weren't affiliated with either party.

Why would? It's a victory for one of them, and proof to the other that they aren't fighting hard enough. It might cause the latter to reconsider strategy, but why would it cause either to question the struggle itself?

You think it's a victory for the republican party? Given how many from the establishment publicly disowned Trump, or simply failed to support him as the party's nominee, it's a bit of a stretch to say the republican party won.

> You think it's a victory for the republican party?

Clearly so. It's perhaps, within the party, a defeat for sone establishment figures in terms of relative internal influence, but clearly the absolute and total lock on all organs of federal power they've secured is a major victory for the party.

And it's not like the party establishment suffered major reverses, either. Had Trump won despite the Republicans losing the Senate or facing unexpectedly large loss of seats in the House, that might be a different story.